funny you should mention airline seating. for the first time in my life, I paid extra for more room. It was a nonstop overnight flight to nyc on jetblue. for $99.00, you could get “More Room” tm. I ran the numbers and didn’t just plunge into the deal. 6 hours, 99 bucks, about 16 an hour, 25 pre tax,hmmm. is the suffering of sleeping less worth 25 an hour. it would’ve been a close call 10 years ago, but today it was a no brainer. I would not suffer that night and over into the next day, even if it was just marginal suffering for 25 an hour.

it ended up being amazingly worth it, the whole row was empty, people were eyeing my spaces hungrily, the attendants actually put the seats up for sale at the eginning fo the flight but warned passengers that if they didn’t sell, they would be asked to leave if they snuck into my adjacent seating. it was SO worth 99.00. I didn’t sleep that great, but not awful, and I was pretty vertical AND peed in the middle of the flight with no problem getting up and down or disturbing anyone.

on the other hand, if the room were 1500 dollars, say for 6 hours, i’d suffer a lot for 250 after tax. would be very difficult for me to justify my comfort at that price. even though 1,500 doesn’t sound like a massive amount of money, and I’m not certain I could find something to spend 1500 on that would be as nice as the lazy boy recliner experience, probably better than 10 massages, in terms of overall body wear and tear.

I still would rather not let go of the 1500 on behalf of my comfort.

I cannot foresee having so much money that i’d pay 250 an hour after tax to be comfortable. id rather forego the trip.

on the other hand, with time in life running out, just so many vacations or trips remaining, maybe i’t better to see it as a nonrecurring rare expense, like the opposite of a tooth extraction. it’s difficult to tell what’s worth what.

as to the true problems of life, the problems of childhood and where the answers lie. those problems, rejections, pains and insights, those are the true work of middle age and beyond. almost hthe entire book 1 of REMMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST is about young proust being put to bed as a child.

we are all still small children inside. the suffering of children creates the mental problems of the middle aged.

did we get enough room in the rear seat of the family car and can I rectify that problem now with a better airline seat?

why did my mother not fully attend to my distress and would perhaps a large tip for this waitress somehow salve the wounds of my infancy and cause someone to attend to the long past but still reverberating distress that is now a distant echo in my heart?

what do I deserve in life? we are born to suffer and die, to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, with never enough leg room. this is man’s fate.